Substantial Traffic at the Kittery Porn Shop

Earlier in July, NPN visited Kittery, Maine and spoke with the town manager and the police chief. Kittery (population 10,000) is smaller than Northampton (population 29,000). Its Capital Video porn shop, Amazing.net, is estimated to be about 4,000 square feet in size. It contains 16 viewing booths. The proposed site for Capital Video’s shop in Northampton has 8,900 square feet, although we understand Capital Video might not use all of that space.

Plans for the Northampton shop call for 20 viewing booths.

During the period when Kittery’s Amazing.net shop had private porn viewing booths, Kittery police chief Edward Strong said it was not uncommon for his department to see 30 vehicles parked outside. At one time, 60 vehicles were counted.

The Kittery shop has a rear exit onto Fernald Road. Early in 2006, residents there “expressed frustration with the amount of traffic, parked vehicles and sex-related trash on their street.” (Seacostonline.com)

A U.S. News profile of the porn industry suggests that peep show booths can be lucrative:

The distribution of sexually explicit material has become intensely competitive. Hundreds of companies now produce and distribute hard-core films, selling them to wholesalers and retailers and directly to consumers. Videotape has lowered production costs so much, according to one industry executive, that the only barriers to entry today are “a sense of embarrassment and the lack of a good lawyer.” The availability of hard-core films on home video has forced adult theaters out of business in cities nationwide. Los Angeles once had more than 30 adult theaters; today it has perhaps six. The number of adult bookstores has also declined, though not so precipitously. The bookstores are supported mainly by their peep booths, which at some locations now allow a customer to watch five hard-core videos simultaneously on dual TV screens, demanding a new quarter every 20 seconds.

(Eric Schlosser, “The Business of Pornography”, U.S. News & World Report, 2/10/97)

About Us

NoPornNorthampton aims to increase awareness about the impact of porn on people and communities. We support the reasonable regulation of sexually oriented businesses in Northampton, Massachusetts and elsewhere. We ask businesspeople to balance profits with compassion. We do not advocate increasing government censorship of porn. For our positive vision of sexuality, visit GreenSexuality.com.